"Sony has filed a new document arguing that the legal action against the noted hacker George Hotz should proceed in California. One of the arguments Hotz's legal team made against California's jurisdiction was the lack of a PlayStation Network account, which means he didn't agree to the Terms of Service, but now the company claims to have 'proof' that Hotz did in fact have a PSN account. An interview with a company based in California, and the number of downloads from California, are being used as evidence."

They do make some nice hardware, apart from a few models in the Vaio laptop series over the years. In years past I was particularly fond of their consumer stereo equipment.

But how is it stupid to choose not to buy from a company that has proven over and over that they will attack customers who dare exercise full ownership of their hardware?

No, I'd say it's quite smart to avoid buying from such a company, since they are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to go after one man for having the gall to try and restore features they had previously marketed and then removed from the system.

As others have said, companies like Apple, Microsoft and Oracle have done some crappy things, but nothing like Sony is doing by directly targeting their own customers for daring to want their device to work as well as it did at purchase time. It's preposterous and bordering on insane, and hopefully the courts will realize that.

In the meantime, I and others like me will continue to buy products from Sony's competitors, as is our right.